


Künstlerroman

by blancwene



Category: Little Women Series - Louisa May Alcott
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Gen, Illusions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 14:36:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17045519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blancwene/pseuds/blancwene
Summary: “Jo!” cried Meg. “You’re not just an author. You’re an illusionist!”(Jo sets off on her artistic journey, while Amy takes a parallel path.)





	Künstlerroman

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SingerQueen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SingerQueen/gifts).



Jo sat at her little makeshift desk in the garret, reading aloud from her contribution towards the March sisters’ next theatrical endeavor. And as she read her description of the opening scene—“a gloomy wood”—that self-same setting swam into watery being around her. The dark trees dripped with rain; the ground was hidden beneath a litter of leaves and twigs; a distant light illuminated the narrow entrance to a cave. Jo stopped, astonished, and the scene faded from sight.

She overturned her chair in her haste and clambered down the stairs.

“You’ll never guess!” she gasped, coming upon Meg and Hannah in the kitchen. “Oh! Where are the others?”

Meg stopped kneading her loaf. “Marmee and Beth are out, and Amy is sketching in her bower. Or she was, last I looked—Jo?” she said questioningly, as her sister grabbed her arm and began towing her out of the kitchen. “Where are we going? My hands are covered in flour.”

“Wipe them on your apron,” said Jo unrepentantly, tugging her up the stairs. “I must show you—I can hardly believe—” She trailed off, pushing Meg towards the sofa. “Let me just—oh, I hope it wasn’t a fluke!”

She grabbed her papers and stood before the sofa, preparing herself. Meg finally broke into the silence by asking, a touch acerbically, whether she planned to begin sometime before supper.

“Hold your hosses, miss,” Jo retorted. “If it doesn’t happen again, I’ll feel such a fool.”

Then she straightened, and began to read aloud in a strong, clear voice. The scene formed around her, less nebulous than before, and she almost imagined she could smell the damp green scent of the forest, feel the rain trickling down the back of her neck. She glanced up from her pages to glimpse Meg’s awestruck face, her eyes darting rapidly about the room.

Jo reached the end of the description and stopped reading. The scene lingered for a few moments before dissolving and vanishing.

“Jo!” cried Meg. “You’re not just an author. You’re an illusionist!”

 

* * *

 

After displaying her newfound talent for the rest of her family, and reveling in their expressions of surprise and pride, Jo turned to more practical matters.

“For I don’t mean to leave my illusions up to chance, dear Marmee,” Jo explained. “I shall approach this in a proper organized manner. Must I read it aloud? Must it be my own writing, or can it be from someone else’s work? And is it merely the surrounding landscape, or can I also call beast and fowl and even man to life?”

“I’m sure you’ll succeed in everything,” said faithful little Beth.

Amy, however, took another tack. If Jo was to be an illusionist, what was stopping her, Amy Curtis March, from becoming an extraordinary artist like the great Artemisia Gentileschi, or Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun? And so she spent more time than ever sketching out of doors, often pausing to inspect her works for any sign of animation, and then moving onto a new piece in disgust when it remained still and lifeless.

Meg and Beth continued as they had before, occasionally producing a random burst of brilliance in their acting and music, but generally unconcerned with exercising and developing that talent as the other two had chosen.

“There is nothing wrong with that,” Marmee told Jo once when she caught her nagging at Meg. “You four all have wondrous extraordinary talents, and I care not a jot whether they stay hobbies, or you pursue them as careers—as long as my girls are respected and content.”

Jo’s scientific approach was precise and, thanks to her writing mania, well-documented. She quickly found that she could only conjure illusions from her own work, and so moved on to testing the complexity of her illusions and their duration. Like the pearl divers who gradually learn to hold their breath for immense spans of time, Jo worked at increasing the time her illusions lingered once she read the final word. She also practiced tempering the volume of her voice without the illusion subsequently weakening and warping. Reading silently produced nothing at all, but she eventually discovered ways to disguise her reading within the background noise of the scene.

Beth disapproved of this style and preferred to hear Jo’s voice booming over the crash of thunder or the crackle of fire. “For it all comes from your imagination, and I love to hear you reading it.”

“But how can you be fully immersed in the illusion if you hear me shouting on about waves over the sound of the sea?” Jo asked her.

“I think your people are too wooden—they’re so _monogamous_ ,” critiqued Miss Malaprop, dropping onto the sofa next to Beth.

“I know, quite monotonous,” Jo sighed, pulling at her hair. “The better my descriptions, the clearer all the images and the more lifelike my characters. And you would think that ‘more descriptions’ would be the solution, but it’s not—remember my _Perilous Tale_?”

Amy shuddered at the memory of that debacle, while Beth gamely offered that it was “not terribly bad.”

“Diplomatically put,” laughed Jo. “But no, I must aim for descriptions that are succinct yet sufficient. And my dialogue needs work—I never knew it was so hard to write how people really talk ’til I attempted it! I’ll make illusions that are real as life, one day—and you, Amy, will paint flowers that move and grow just like our view out that window.”

“Thank you,” said Amy gravely. “But I have decided to try a new medium. I mean to now make clay _statures_.”

 

* * *

 

“What’s the point of illusions if I can’t make my gloves look clean?” Jo griped, inspecting the offending articles.

“They’d be clean if you weren’t a complete ragamuffin,” scolded Meg. “You can’t wear those to the Gardiners.”

“‘We cannot influence the material world, only our perception of it,’” Amy said, quoting Margaret Fuller.

“Well, pooh to that, and pooh to Miss Fuller too,” said Jo. “When I am a famous illusionist, touring Europe, I’ll find a way to illusion my clothes properly. It’d be ever so useful if I could turn these white again, or take the scorch marks out of my skirt.”

“Oh Jo!” cried Meg, spinning her sister around and peering at her back. “Why must you stand so close to the fire? You’ll have to keep your back to the wall at all times.”

“Yes’m,” Jo agreed placidly.

All things considered, Jo lasted practically an eternity before retreating to a curtained recess. Only it was an appealing hiding place to others as well, for it already sheltered a refugee.

“Sorry!” Jo said, tripping over the curly-haired boy. “I’ll find my own hidey-hole if you like.”

“No—you’re welcome here—I expect you’re escaping from something dreadful too.”

“Yes,” agreed Jo. “The threat of dancing! I have been forbidden to show my back half, so I certainly can’t dance. You must be the Laurence boy. I’m Jo March, and I’m an author and an illusionist,” she said, sticking out a gentlemanly hand.

“An illusionist?” he echoed.

“Yes! Though far from a proper established one, I’m afraid, more of a fledgling illusionist-in-training. If you can find paper and a pencil, I’ll show you.”

When Meg found them later in the evening, Jo was perched on the stairs a few steps above the Laurence boy—“call me Laurie,” he told her—reading aloud from a scrap of paper. An illusory Jo skirted the walls of a fantastical version of the Gardiners’ ballroom, weaving between groups of conversationalists and avoiding a red-haired young man. Laurie writhed with amusement, and it took Meg several moments to attract their attention.

“I’m so glad to have finally met you,” Jo said, shaking his hand farewell. “I believe we shall be great friends!”

 

* * *

 

One spring morning found Jo and Marmee engaged in a heated discussion in the parlor, so Meg herded the younger two back to the kitchen. “It’s none of our business, and Jo wouldn’t welcome eavesdroppers.”

Jo railed and waved around a newspaper. Marmee waited for her to finish, then launched into a devastating lecture. When they both returned to the kitchen, Marmee’s lips were folded tight together, and Jo was uncharacteristically silent.

She stormed off to Aunt March’s, her face flushed and furious, and when she returned in the afternoon her temper had not improved. She hurtled off to the garret and threw herself into her latest piece. But scarcely an hour had passed before Jo dropped her pen in disgust.

Beth raised her head from her kittens, and Jo waved a dismissive hand. “I’m just blocked. Everything has been progressing at a good clip, and now I realized that I haven’t the slightest clue how someone would travel from Florence to Rome.”

“By boat?” Beth suggested.

“That’s just it—I haven’t the foggiest notion whether it’s by land or by sea. Maybe Laurie knows,” and removing her writing cap, she trampled down the stairs and out the front door.

She ran across to the Laurence house, rang the bell, and asked for Mr. Laurie.

“I’m here,” she heard from the library, and hurrying in she threw herself into a velvet chair.

“Laurie, how would I find out how to get from Florence to Rome? I’m absolutely stuck and must reunite Angelo and Viola.”

“Why, look in an atlas,” said Laurie, glancing up from his book.

“Thank you very much, but I haven’t one,” Jo said curtly.

“Well, I do, you goose,” he retorted. “Or rather, Grandfather does. I suppose—” he sighed, for Jo was already ransacking the shelves, “I suppose you may peruse it.”

“Hmm,” she said, rapidly flipping pages.

Laurie got up and walked over to her, taking the atlas from her hands and turning to the index. “Italy’s on page thirty-eight. What’s wrong?”

“Blocked,” Jo ground out, snatching the book back.

“No, truly.”

Jo’s head bent over the book. “It’s not fair. I have this gift, I should be using it! If I could go fight, like Father—for imagine what the Army could do with my illusions. But Marmee—”

Laurie nodded sympathetically. “Mrs. March told you no?”

“Even worse, Teddy,” Jo said, finally looking up from the atlas. “She lectured me. She said my gift wasn’t meant for war and bloodshed, but for joy and wonder. Anyone with a talent like mine must walk a fine line between being respected and admired, and being feared. Then she told me such stories—of what had happened to—to others like me, in the past. It’s not fair! I’d never want people to whisper and avoid me.”

She straightened her shoulders defiantly. “I hope you’ll never think me ‘unnatural.’”

“You’re as good as Shakespeare,” he said loyally.

“Well, not yet,” Jo admitted.

“What you need is a performance of your piece, when you’re done. So that everyone can see how you’re an authoress and an illusionist. And a soon-to-be celebrated one in America and abroad, of course.”

“Of course,” agreed Jo modestly.

 

* * *

 

Amy struggled with her clay figures until she ultimately threw them over for a new interest: charcoals. Meanwhile, Jo wrote and pruned and tested and refined until she felt ready to unleash “The Rival Painters” on the world—or, if not on the world, at least on her family and a select number of acquaintances.

The audience eagerly trooped into the parlor, while Beth supported Jo in the adjoining room. Jo, understandably, was having second thoughts, and had decided to settle her head by hanging it out of the dining room window.

“Oh, why’d I ever do this?” moaned Jo, who loved theatricals but found her new calling as an illusionist a rather more daunting prospect than she had realized.

“You will do a splendid job, and everyone will be amazed,” Beth said reassuringly.

“I must,” said Jo grimly, “or I’d never live with myself.” She leaned further out the window, craning her head for a look at the Laurence house. “Do you think Teddy and Mr. Laurence are here yet? Was it a mistake to invite Aunt March?”

“You’re procrastinating,” said Beth, standing up to pull Jo out of the window. “Break a leg!”

Blowing a kiss, she vanished behind the curtain, and Jo stood alone.

She grabbed her papers, took a deep breath, and threw the curtains open. “The Rival Painters, by Josephine March,” she announced, then began the story of the poor painter Angelo and his lovely Viola.

The audience gasped as the humble Florentine home formed around them, and watched as Angelo left with his mother’s blessing.

The scene changed to the streets of Rome, then the studio of the old painter. Jo’s voice steadily led them through the meeting with the fair Viola, to the competition between Angelo and the young count Ferdinand, and the reveal of the paintings.

The illusion lingered on the final scene, until Jo triumphantly shouted out “The End!” and the parlor with its attentive audience reappeared.

Meg and Beth leapt out of their seats to hug her, and Amy and Laurie led the others with shouts of “Brava!” and “Well done, Jo!” Marmee smiled, Mr. Laurence nodded, Aunt March looked almost approving, and Hannah was caught in a loop of “Bless me’s” that never became an intelligible sentence.

“Thank you very much for attending my first ‘immersive story,’ as I have decided to call them,” Jo said once everyone had quieted down.

“You should publish it,” cut in Laurie.

“I—but the illusion—I can’t—” stammered Jo.

“I thought it a grand story, and I’m sure _The Spread Eagle_ never published anything half so romantic,” added Meg.

“I’d read it again, even without the _inversion_ ,” said Amy.

Jo grinned at her benevolent audience. “Thank you, I’m deeply obliged to know that if this illusion scheme doesn’t pan out, you lot are perfectly happy imagining my creations in your own heads!”

 

* * *

 

Jo tore through the front door, and avoiding Marmee and Aunt March in the parlor, pelted up the stairs. “ _The Spread Eagle_ will take my stories at $1 a column,” she yelled down. “Laurie said he’d help me choose the best of the rubbish.”

“Must that girl trample around like an elephant?” complained Aunt March.

Marmee merely smiled.

Jo appeared in the doorway. “Well, I’m off—oh—hello Aunt March!”

Then she was gone again and the front door slammed. Amy drifted past, and Marmee beckoned her into the room.

“Good day Aunt March,” she said, a little subdued. She held her sketchbook, and more than ever had the air of a frustrated artiste.

“What’s that you have there? Your sketchbook? Let me see it,” the old lady ordered.

Amy reluctantly handed it over, and took a seat on the settee. Aunt March made numerous criticisms and scarce any compliments as she flipped through the book, so Amy was surprised when she closed it and pronounced that she showed “some promise.”

“But there’s no life in my art!” Amy cried out. “I try and I try, but—nothing. Jo can make her words come alive for a time. And I know it’s possible. Why, Pliny the Elder mentioned ever so many female artists—like Helena of Egypt, and her mosaic—whose works seemed to move and breathe and—and endure, at least as long as the artist was living. And that was thousands of years ago! It’s so irritating to be constantly failing when you know it should be perfectly doable.”

“You’re getting ahead of yourself, child. Learn the basics first. The rest might come in time.”

“What’s the point if I never create something extraordinary?” asked Amy, exasperated.

“You certainly won’t create anything with that attitude,” Aunt March answered. “I think you pay far too much heed to that nonsense Mr. Emerson spouts. Variable outlets and all that. No doubt you’ve memorized it.”

“‘All people are outlets for the Over-Soul. That which we call magic is simply the visible expression of that piece of the divine Over-Soul within oneself,’” Amy quoted. She paused. “Are you saying that Mr. Emerson is wrong?”

“No. Simply that you’re too fixated on that transcendental clap-trap. Concentrate on line, form, composition. Yes, when she was alive your beloved Madame Le Brun made paintings with smiling women in billowing gowns. But when she died, all that was left was the physical canvas, and what she put on it. Same as your Helena, and those other Greek girls. You must master the act of drawing itself before you can begin worrying about mystical things.”

She turned to Marmee. “I’ll pay for drawing lessons, from a good teacher. She has potential, if she just learns to focus.”

“But Jo—”

“Your sister may be a ramshackle young miss, but she’s dedicated and diligent in exercising her talent. You need someone to keep you from flitting to each new idea.”

Amy leapt up to embrace her. “Thank you, Aunt March! I won’t disappoint you—I’ll be immensely focused. You won’t regret this!”

“I should hope not,” Aunt March said ominously.

 

* * *

 

Amy remained true to her word—at least, during the drawing lessons themselves. Once ensconced in the safety of the March house, though, she returned to her profligate ways: trying pastels before abandoning them for watercolors, only to circle back around to charcoals again.

Jo dutifully sent her little romances to _The Spread Eagle_ , and just as dutifully handed off her earnings to Marmee. However, she yearned for greater things, unsure of what direction to take until Laurie provided her with the perfect opportunity.

She wandered out into the garden, gnawing on an apple, and nearly tripped over Laurie. He jumped to his feet and began refolding a news sheet. She studied him curiously. “What’ve you got?”

“Trash.”

Give it to me, then.”

He handed it over, and Jo unfolded it to reveal a pictorial sheet. Maidens wailed in proper teeth-gnashing fashion; a pair of elegant gentleman engaged in a round of fisticuffs; a train spewing a great plume of black smoke hurtled towards a hapless child, who was incongruously playing with blocks right in the middle of the railroad tracks. She turned the page over to read the headline. “‘The Discarded Child, or The Vale of Shadows, by Mrs. S.L.A.N.G. Northbury.’ Any good?”

“No,” Laurie said cheerfully. “Utter garbage. But I can’t stop reading it. Everything ends suddenly, in the middle of an awful situation, so you’re forced to buy the next issue to find out how it’s resolved.”

“Snatched from the brink of peril only to dangle on the edge again?”

“And repeat, _ad nauseam_.” He took back the story paper and turned to the last page. “They’re running a contest: a hundred dollar prize to the best story.”

Jo whistled. “That’s more than I’ve made from my romances. What’s the address?”

“Here,” he said, passing it back. “You can keep it. But I call dibs on reading your entry.”

Jo hurried home each afternoon from Aunt March’s, and her contest attempt quickly consumed all available space in the garret. Finished pages were stacked on the old tin kitchen, while discards littered every surface. Meg and Beth initially tried removing pages from the sofa, only to be met by shrieks of dismay from Jo. “I have a system! Those are my notes on tidal waves!”

Unlike her romances, which were written primarily as illusions for her family’s enjoyment, Jo paid far less heed to the illusion, using it mostly to visualize and tweak parts of her sensational story. 

“Thalia’s nose should be more _retroussé_ ,” advised Amy, inspecting Jo’s protagonists. “And Vincent needs to be taller—he is the hero, after all.”

Jo dragged her lovers out of the mouth of one catastrophe, only to drop them again and again into new, even more treacherous ones. The villain’s machinations became progressively more sinister and complex, until finally she dispatched him—along with all his minions and a few innocent bystanders—in a proper _deus ex machina_ of a freak storm. Her lovers reunited, she wrapped up the ending and slapped the last page with the rest of the stack.

“It’s certainly better than ‘The Discarded Child.’” Laurie said. “Do you have a title yet?”

“I do: ‘By the Sign of the Full Moon, or The Treacherous Guardian,’” Jo said proudly.

“I can’t imagine any of the other entries could surpass it. When will you send it?”

“Today—but you must help me package it up.”

The next few months found a Jo who was unable to concentrate on any new stories, and her weekly column at _The Spread Eagle_ became increasingly dependent on old tales that she dug out of her trunk. 

She asked about the postman so often that Marmee almost snapped at her. “It’ll come when it comes. You’ll terrify that poor man if you keep ambushing him in the lane.”

One day, though, she returned from Aunt March’s to find an envelope addressed to “J. March” on the front table. Her hands shaking, she ripped it open and let out a whoop when she saw what was inside.

“I did it—$100!” she yelled, waving the check around the kitchen. “Marmee, what a fortune—I must tell Teddy!”

She dashed through the back door and across Amy’s bower into the Laurences’ yard, where the whooping soon started up again.

“I’m going to retrieve that check, before they lose it,” Meg said, slipping out the back after her.

Marmee opened the letter to read:

> Dear Miss March,
> 
> We are pleased to announce that your story, “By the Sign of the Full Moon,” has won our contest for the best sensational story, and enclosed please find the hundred-dollar prize. We enjoyed your story very much, and should be greatly interested in any other stories sent our way.
> 
> Very sincerely yours, etc.  
>  THE BLARNEYSTONE BANNER

 

* * *

 

Jo sold more stories to _The Blarneystone Banner_ , and become even more the main breadwinner of the March household. Her illusions fell somewhat by the wayside, though she still trotted one out from time to time at family gatherings and holidays. But while she could keep the Marches fed and clothed and reasonably content, she couldn’t stop things from changing.

The war ended, and Mr. March returned home to his family and congregation—and increasingly, to the stack of books in his study that had waited years to be read and reread.

Meg married, and moved from the March house to a little cottage of her own. Jo had railed and raged at the news of her engagement—“how could you think of breaking up our family when we’ve only just been reunited?”—but by the day of the wedding, she had outwardly made her peace with it.

She smiled through the ceremony, and shook John’s hand afterwards with great goodwill. She was polite and subdued during the wedding luncheon, and even the dancing organized by Laurie could not restore her more boisterous spirits.

Meg pulled her aside upstairs, as she changed from her wedding gown into a new traveling suit. “I hope you’re not displeased with me still!”

“My dear Meg, I wouldn’t dare—particularly on your special day. I was being selfish, wanting to keep you all with me forever. But I can’t stop time.” She sighed, and cupped Meg’s cheeks between her palms. “I wish you every imaginable happiness!”

“Oh, Jo! Things have to change, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I know that great things are coming your way. For how else are you to write the name of March on the scroll of frame?”

Meg was right, although it wasn’t Jo who was offered an amazing opportunity. It was Amy.

She had made a few quick pencil sketches during the festivities, and decided to commit one to canvas. She had caught Meg and John when they left the March house for their new home, and Meg was glancing behind her shoulder back at her sisters.

Amy painted the June roses in Meg’s hands, and the bright green of the bushes bordering the lane. She painted the crisp gray folds of Meg’s skirts, and the rosy blush of her cheeks under her proper little bonnet. She painted the fading sky, and the empty road beyond.

And for the first time in her life, she achieved that rare brilliance in her painting. Perhaps it was all the careful details from her memory of the scene, or perhaps the excitement and sadness she felt, watching her sister step towards this new stage of her life. For the more you studied it, the more Amy’s painting seemed to come alive: a gentle wind rustled the leaves, and Meg’s little hand came up to wave at the unseen bystanders.

“It’s beautiful,” breathed Beth.

“How did you do it?” asked Jo, her pen ready to transcribe Amy’s method.

“I don’t know,” Amy admitted. “It didn’t feel any different from any of my other paintings, and it can’t be the subject. I’ve painted and drawn and sculpted Meg any number of times. I wish I knew how I managed it.”

“Focus,” pronounced Aunt March on viewing it. “Didn’t I say you needed to concentrate more?”

A few weeks later, Aunt March summoned their parents for a private word. They returned home that afternoon, and called the three girls into the parlor.

“Aunt March informed us that she was discontinuing Amy’s drawing lessons,” Mr. March began.

“What?” cried Jo hotly. “But she’s the best artist out of that lot!”

“Instead,” continued Mr. March, “she would like to send Amy abroad, to the Académie Julian in Paris. You have the right to decline her offer, but she very much hopes you’ll accept.”

“Aunt March wants to send me to art school? In France? Of course I’ll accept! When must I leave?”

“How long will she be gone? Will she have to travel alone?” Beth asked nervously.

“I believe Aunt March has made arrangements for Amy to travel with a local family, at least as far as Southampton,” said Marmee. “You should tell her you accept, without delay. Make sure to thank her for her consideration.”

“I’ll go immediately!”

Amy hurried out of the parlor, and Marmee turned to Jo. She had sat for the last few minutes in a silent state of shock, which appeared to be melting into a stony anger. “Jo, will you please help me in the kitchen?”

She repeated herself again, until Jo eventually looked up. “I’m sorry, Marmee—I wasn’t attending.”

Jo trailed her into the kitchen, and Marmee seated her at the table. “I know you’re disappointed, but this is a wonderful opportunity for Amy.”

“But Europe!” Jo burst out. “Oh Marmee, if it’d been a school in Boston or New York, I’d be ecstatic for her. But you know how long I’ve wanted to go to Europe, and Aunt March has too, no doubt. She’s always liked Amy better than me.”

“I doubt Aunt March planned this with the sole purpose of disappointing you.”

“No, it’s more that Amy’s talent is ladylike and respectable. But she’s never contributed to this family like I have. I have hardly any time to spare for my illusions, what with my job and my stories. I’m not even sure if I’d write those sensational stories, if I didn’t know each one was a guaranteed check for the March family’s coffers!”

“Now that’s not true,” interjected Marmee. “You enjoy writing those wild stories, just as you enjoyed writing your melodramatic theatricals and your short romances. We appreciate how you help support our family with your writing, but it’d be an absolute lie for you to say you derive no pleasure from it.”

Marmee stood up. “You will congratulate your sister on her good fortune. Meanwhile, I’ll see if I can’t find you a place to try your wings, at least for a time.”

 

* * *

 

At the dinner table, Marmee passed Jo an envelope.

“What’s this?” Jo asked, turning it over and reading the return address.

“A change of scenery, if you fancy it,” Marmee said with a smile.

Jo opened it to find a letter from a Mrs. Kirke in New York City. Mrs. Kirke thanked Marmee for her kind words about Mr. Kirke—apparently deceased—and said that yes, she had need of a nanny for her two young daughters, Kitty and Minnie. If Miss Josephine was interested in the position, she would be glad to host her for as long as she decided to stay in New York.

“Mrs. Kirke runs a boarding house, and since her daughters are young and lively, she finds it hard to run her business and care for them,” Marmee explained. “Some of your afternoons, and all of your evenings, would be yours to do as you pleased. You’d have plenty of time to write, or work on your illusions again. Shall I let her know that you’re interested?”

Jo read the letter again, then nodded. “Please do, Marmee. I think a change of scene is exactly what I need.”

Jo spent the train and steamboat rides glued to the view, for before today she had never traveled further than the twenty-some miles from Concord to Boston. Mrs. Kirke met her at the station, and engaged Jo in small talk during the cab ride to the boarding house—though again, Jo longed to plaster her face to the window and just gawk at the sights. She settled Jo into a compact sky parlor with a little pot-bellied stove, and Jo likewise settled into her role as nursemaid and governess.

Jo had plenty of free time to spend scribbling in her attic room, and started tinkering with several ideas for stories or illusions. But she found herself increasingly interested in something else entirely. One of Mrs. Kirke’s boarders was a German professor named Bhaer. He gave German lessons during the day in Mrs. Kirke’s private parlor, and as this room adjoined the little girls’ nursery, she couldn’t help overhearing his classes.

Her Latin was minimal and her French even more abysmal than Amy’s, but she loved all words, and took to furtively jotting down the most interesting ones she heard. _Fernweh_ was a yearning for far-away places; _Kuddelmuddel_ was a disastrous total hodgepodge.

She had compiled a decent little collection of German words when Mr. Bhaer knocked at the connecting door and caught her puzzling over the spelling of _Lebensmüde_.

“There are two little dots over the u—we say an umlaut,” he said, peering over her shoulder. “You like words, Miss March?”

“I don’t know any German,” she confessed. “But I think it’s so interesting how the words are constructed. Like that word— _Lebensmüde_ —it’s literally “life-tired,” I take it? I wish we could mash a bunch of English words together and make a completely new one, as you do in German.”

“Ah, but you are a writer! So of course you must pay attention to many things: the meaning, and the sound, and the look of the word.”

He smiled. “If you prefer, I could teach you the grammar, and the conjugations as well.”

“I’d like that very much. I’ve been hopeless at every language but English, so you mustn’t expect much, but I shall certainly try. And please, call me Jo.”

 

* * *

 

> Ma chère famille,
> 
> As you may have guessed by my salutation, my French has been improving enormously. Alas, I am still very far from being able to speak _avec aisance_ , as they say here. Half the time I start one of my slow and painfully constructed sentences, only for the other speaker to interrupt with “ _Anglaise_?” I have become quite adept at retorting “ _Non, Américaine_!” with a look of hurt Yankee pride upon my face.
> 
> “But enough about your schoolgirl French!” I can hear you cry. “How was your voyage, and how is the Académie Julian?”
> 
> I was initially skeptical of “tagging along” with the Bartletts, but they were so kind and thoughtful that I was quite desolated when we landed in Southampton. Fortunately, they decided to accompany me all the way to Paris, so I was able to remain with them for a little while longer. We took the train from Southampton to Dover, and henceforth boarded a ferry to Calais. Once there, we boarded another train to Paris, and after a number of hours we arrived!
> 
> I am sharing a little room on the Left Bank with another student from the school, a Canadian girl named Cecilia Beaux. The Left Bank is full of many romantic artist types, for its most alluring feature is its affordable food and lodging, particularly when you are “rooming” with another as I have chosen. Cecilia is a good friend, though prone to teasing, and very proficient at French.
> 
> About the Académie Julian: classes are segregated by sex, so my classes are attended only by lady artists, although some of our instructors are men. I am studying sketching, painting, and sculpture, but am proving a poorly deficient sculptress. Why must hands be so difficult? I can draw them reasonably well, but when three-dimensional they resemble strange claws more than proper digits.
> 
> I am so determined to learn and succeed, however, that in my free time I have taken to haunting the Louvre. Sometimes I make my own copies of the great masters, and other times I just observe. Paris is very humbling. In Concord I was the artist, whereas here I am just one of countless students, thus far indistinguishable from the rest. Still, I will try to remain:
> 
> YOUR AMY

 

* * *

 

> Dearest Beth,
> 
> Now that I have begun this letter, I realize that I can’t keep my news to myself any longer. Tell Marmee and Father! Tell Meg and John! Tell Mr. Laurence, and Aunt March, and Teddy on his next college break, and Amy in your next letter! Tell everyone you see that I, Josephine March, have been hired to create an illusion!
> 
> But I’m afraid I’m getting ahead of myself, and must start properly at the beginning.
> 
> I have put on a few illusions for Kitty and Minnie Kirke, usually as a reward for particularly good behavior. I’ve taken to writing up my own version of a fairy tale or nursery rhyme, so that afternoon I was presenting them with the story of “Golden Hair and the Three Bears.” Golden Hair was Amy, right down to the clothespin she used to fasten on her nose at night; being unable to resist the glorious pun, my bears were a respectable trio of German beasts. _Bärvater_ , _Bärmutter_ , and _Bärbaby_ had returned home to find eaten porridge, a broken chair, and bursts of laughter from Kitty and Minnie when a knock was heard at the nursery door.
> 
> The bears froze, still puzzling over the mysterious state of their house, and the author opened the door to reveal the little daughter of Mrs. Kirke’s laundry woman, and Mr. Bhaer standing behind her.
> 
> “Tina heard you reading a story, and wished to know if she might listen?” His gaze moved from my face to the room behind me, and he looked thunderstruck. “ _Mein Gott_...Miss Jo, are you also an _Illusionistin_?”
> 
> “Well, the writing and the illusions seem to go hand in hand,” I explained. The bears faded away. “Oh, there they go. You two should come in and have a seat, and I’ll start over again so you don’t miss anything.”
> 
> Mr. Bhaer and Tina were like two peas in a pod, watching silently as Golden Hair caused havoc and the bears subsequently discovered it. My charges wildly cheered the ending, and dragged Tina off to play. I turned to the professor, and lumberingly asked if he enjoyed the piece.
> 
> “I call them ‘immersive stories,’ but that one was just something I tossed off last night for the girls,” I told him.
> 
> “I thought it was wonderful. The little girl seemed so real—and the joke of the German bears! I liked it exceedingly. Why do you not pursue this?”
> 
> I shrugged my shoulders. “Don’t know how, I’m afraid! It’s been relatively easy to sell my stories; you send them to an editor, and they write you back yea or nay. But this—I suppose you need a venue, and a producer, and who knows what else.”
> 
> “I will speak with Miss Norton,” he said, naming another of Mrs. Kirke’s lodgers, “for she knows much of these literary matters.”
> 
> I nodded, and thought that would be the end of it, so I was caught by surprise a week later when Miss Norton turned to me at dinner and asked if I’d like to attend an illusion with her, at the Maxwell Theater. I immediately accepted, and we decided on Saturday night for the date.
> 
> She also told me that she could introduce me to the producer afterwards, a Mr. Dashwood, so I spent the following week selecting and practicing my best five minute snippet.
> 
> Saturday arrived, and we took a hansom cab to the theater. The marquee proclaimed that we would see “The thrilling, chilling, unbelievable tale of _Held in Bondage_ , by Miss Price.” We entered and were seated, and after some time the illusion rose around us.
> 
> First, I must be honest: Miss Price’s range (for the room was so large!) and ability to vanish beneath the illusion was laudable. But the story...as Teddy would say, it was “trash.” The characters were wooden, their motivations unfathomable, and the dialogue perhaps the clunkiest I’d ever heard. Still, I found myself getting swept up in the drama, and when the illusion disappeared and the theater re-formed about me I nearly jumped in my seat. I tried to look for the illusionist—I had ever so many questions for Miss Price about her technique!—but Miss Norton shepherded me towards the booth at the back of the theater.
> 
> Mr. Dashwood proved to be a tired-looking man, smoking a cigar with his feet up on a table. He shook my hand briefly, then retaking his seat, barked out, “Show us what you’ve got then, eh?”
> 
> It was an unpromising introduction, but I gamely pulled out my papers and began. I had chosen a scene from “By the Sign of the Full Moon”—the part where Thalia first realized that she was being followed by her guardian’s henchmen. She crept through the train station, peered around corners, and (heart-pounding and breath-gasping) secreted herself in an empty carriage. But as she caught her breath, the carriage door began to creak open…
> 
> I ended the illusion rather more abruptly than I normally do, and looked to Mr. Dashwood. He grunted that it was “fine,” then handed me a stack of papers.
> 
> “What are these?” I asked.
> 
> “Contract, and loose story guidelines. Can you have it ready in eight weeks? You’ll get $50 on delivery of the piece, then $15 for every performance. We’ll start with six, and see how it’s received.”
> 
> I stared at him, slow to comprehend. “Are you hiring me?”
> 
> “Eight weeks, and you must stick to that list,” he repeated. “We’ll see you again, Miss March.”
> 
> I walked out of the booth, deaf and dumb to everything around me. I’m to be a professional illusionist! And paid $140, and possibly more!
> 
> YOURS, EXCEEDINGLY SHOCKED,  
>  JO

 

* * *

 

Jo threw herself completely into the commissioned illusion, and sometimes emerged from her writing frenzy unaware of the time, or even the date. Her charges found her preoccupied with _The Demon of Jura_ , and could have easily taken advantage of her inattention. Instead, they played quietly in the nursery, leaving Jo free to scribble both day and night.

At times, though, she regretted accepting Mr. Dashwood’s offer without first reading the mess of papers he had handed her. The contract specified that if she couldn’t present her illusion for all six show-times, she forfeited everything but the $50 payment for completion. The guidelines, meanwhile, were very far from loose; they dictated everything from character descriptions to locations and plot twists.

Jo was loath to admit failure, for this was her great breakthrough and she longed to prove herself. But she frequently found herself starting scenes that poured from her pen, only to sadly discard them after a closer review of the dreaded guidelines.

She finished the illusion a few days ahead of the eight week deadline, and delivered it to the Maxwell Theater in person. Mr. Dashwood sat smoking and note-taking through the rehearsal run, and at the end handed her a list of edits as well as a schedule of performances.

“First one’s next Friday. See if you can’t hide yourself in the illusion more—we prefer the author not stand out at all.”

Jo returned to the boarding house and dutifully worked on Mr. Dashwood’s edits, which seemed to be limited to the removal of the few moral reflections that had remained in the piece. At dinner she passed around the schedule, with Miss Norton and Mrs. Kirke agreeing to come on opening night, while Mr. Bhaer had to settle on the second show.

“I am attending a lecture on that Friday, on Kant,” he said, regretfully. “But I am very much looking forward to Saturday night.”

She made it through the first performance with only minor mistakes, and Miss Norton and Mrs. Kirke came up afterwards to congratulate her.

“Not my style, my dear, but you did an excellent job,” Mrs. Kirke told her.

Jo thanked them abstractedly, for her thoughts had already moved on to the next night’s performance. Since the professor was watching tomorrow night, she resolved to present him with a more polished rendition, free of tonight’s little errors.

Saturday night’s performance was technically flawless, and as soon as the applause ceased she hurried over to Mr. Bhaer. He still sat in his seat, towards the middle of the theater, and she hovered over him awkwardly.

“What did you think?” she pressed. When he didn’t respond, her face crumbled. “You didn’t like it—”

He shook his head and stood. “No—I—” He collected himself. “Will you walk with me, my friend?”

Mr. Bhaer took her arm, and led her out of the theater and onto the sidewalk of the gaslit street. “I thought it was clearly the work of a competent _Illusionistin_. But I wonder—did you choose the story yourself?”

“There were guidelines I had to follow,” Jo confirmed. “About the characters and the direction of the plot. But I wrote it all myself.”

“I do not doubt it. Perhaps I misspeak— _wie sagt man_ —if you could have presented any illusion, would it still have been this one, this _Demon of Jura_?”

“Well—” she began. “No,” she decided finally. “I wrote any number of scenes that I ended up cutting, because they didn’t fit with what I’d been assigned.”

“You have a wondrous and rare talent. I have seldom seen its like. Your little _Märchen_ had heart, and humor, and it also very much seemed to bear the touch of its creator.

“But this illusion,” he said, glancing back at the marquee. “It had nothing of yourself in it. If you had told me that I had just seen an illusion by Miss Price, or anyone else, I should have believed you. It was divorced completely from your voice.”

Jo bit her lip, and swiped furtively at her cheeks. 

“I have upset you,” he said apologetically.

“No! You were just repeating what I already knew, but didn’t want to admit. I couldn’t be a quitter, but I had—second thoughts—from the start. I should have read the contract beforehand, at the very least. I’ll forfeit almost $100 if I don’t make all the performances.”

“Do the other shows,” Mr. Bhaer advised. “You have given your word. But next, perhaps, you can try writing something original and true.”

“I’d like that,” she said, and spent the rest of the walk home in silent thought.

 

* * *

 

Jo finished out her performances, though her heart was no longer in it. When Mr. Dashwood handed over her pay in grimy bills at the end of the sixth show, he raised the possibility of extending The Demon of Jura’s run.

“Thank you,” Jo said calmly. “However, I’d like to try my hand at an illusion that’s all my own, without any guidelines to follow.”

“It’ll be hard to find a venue, with only one show under your belt,” sniffed Mr. Dashwood. “You can always sign another contract with us, if you change your mind.”

When Jo sat in her room that evening, staring at the pile of money on her desk, she wondered aloud if she’d made a mistake.

“No,” she declared. “I’d rather give up illusions entirely than make something so—so soulless.”

She shoved her ill-gotten gains to the side, and returned to a letter from Amy that Marmee had forwarded to New York:

 _I received such a ribbing from Cecilia and my fellow students_ —she read, flipping the sheet over— _for I am always painting and sketching flowers when we must make still lifes. Each day they called me by a different flower name, and when they reached “Pansy” I was beyond irritated. I declared I would choose as my subjects anything BUT flowers, and made arrangements of fruit and branches and anything non-flowery I could find._

_But Marmee, what did I realize but that I increasingly missed my little bouquets! So I decided at once that I would only sketch and paint what I truly liked. And I have painted nothing but flowers ever since! The ribbing gradually stopped, for I simply stuck my nose in the air and refused to acknowledge it._

“Amy too!” Jo said. “I should write her, and tell her about my own revelations.”

She thought often about what she wanted to write, and what her writing had evolved into over the years. “Don’t think about the money,” she told herself. “Write what _you_ find appealing.”

She considered this—and then she began.

A little while later, she stood outside the parlor door and waited for the professor’s last student to depart. He motioned her inside, and she nervously adjusted the papers in her hands.

“I’ve started something, and I wondered—could you give me your honest opinion of it?”

“Of course,” he said, and took a seat in the corner.

Jo’s illusion followed four sisters—the oldest pretty and motherly, one gawky and hot-tempered, another sweet and reserved, and the youngest vain and ambitious—during the first week of their summer vacation, and their experiment in “doing nothing.”

They grew increasingly cranky and bored as the week progressed, but none would admit that they were tired of the monotony. The experiment concluded with a comically disastrous Saturday, packed with unexpected guests and culinary catastrophes. And through it all, Jo’s voice could be felt, wryly observing their predicament. The scene closed with all four girls collapsed on the front porch in despair.

“That’s what I have so far,” she said once the scene had faded. “Do I think I should continue?”

“Absolutely,” he said.

**Author's Note:**

> The _Künstlerroman_ , also called the artist novel, is an important subtype of the _Bildungsroman_. It follows an artist's growth to maturity that is marked by a recognition of art as the protagonist’s calling, and by a mastery of an artistic craft.
> 
> Thanks to E. again for correcting my German.


End file.
